A 2-year-old right whale was spotted earlier this month free of the heavy fishing line that had encircled its body when it was last seen in Georgia waters in December.

Researchers from the New England Aquarium sighted the whale, nicknamed Nemo, on June 14 in the Great South Channel east of Cape Cod.

"It was alone and just slowly swimming," said Amy Knowlton, a research biologist with the New England Aquarium.

In December, a rescue team that included biologists from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources tried to free Nemo of the fishing gear that wrapped around its body, cutting into its back.

They followed the whale to North Carolina and removed some trailing lines and buoys from it before Nemo shed its transmitter. After that, they were no longer able to track the animal.

"We left off at Hatteras and hoped that with cutting off the trailing line the rest would be able to loosen up," said Clay George, a wildlife biologist with the Georgia DNR involved in the disentanglement effort.

Knowlton credited the team with saving the whale's life. Removing some of the gear probably allowed the main wrap to work itself free, just as George hoped.

"If they hadn't done anything for it I'm not sure it would've survived," she said. "That kind of entanglement can be quite deadly especially in a young animal because they can grow into it."

She's not ready to declare Nemo healthy, though.

"We're still a little concerned there's something around its right flipper," she said. "You can't see the flipper from ship board images. What we're going to do is monitor its health and see if it improves or deteriorates."

North Atlantic right whales are among the most endangered of all large whales. It's estimated that 300-350 of them remain. The New England Aquarium catalogs the animals using the unique wart-like patterns on their heads, called callosities, that are the whale equivalent of human fingerprints. Nemo is known in the catalog as number 3445. Its gender is not yet known.

Right whales were hunted nearly to extinction in the mid-1700s when they were considered the "right" whale to kill because of their large size, distribution near the coast and tendency to float after death.

Right whales now face dangers from entanglement in fishing gear and from boat strikes.

Late last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proposed speed restrictions on ships to reduce the risk of collisions between them and right whales.

The proposal by NOAA would reduce ship speed to 10 knots (11.5 miles per hour) or less in the seasonal habitats frequented by right whales. The proposal would apply to ships 65 feet or greater in right whale habitats off the New England, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern coasts, including the port of Savannah.

Federal agency vessels, such as those of the Navy and Coast Guard, are exempted. The proposals also allow for "dynamic management" of vessel speeds if right whales appear in an area when seasonal restrictions are not in effect.

Whale researchers applauded the proposal, which was more stringent than many of them expected.

"If these regulations had been in place over the past few decades, more than two-thirds of the ship strike related deaths could have been prevented," Knowlton said. "In the long term, these restrictions could mean the difference between the survival or extinction of this species."

New protections concerning fishing gear are under consideration separately, George said.

Gear modification could include requiring weak links on buoy lines so the force of a whale's body would tear them away.

"We can disentangle them one at a time but that's no substitute for fishery policy," George said.

Proposed shipping rule to protect right whales

A summary of the proposed rule changes is available at: www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/shipstrike